Sunday.  27th, not backdating although late.  Where were we.  I left off with hints of pork crackling and tomatoes.  Well the tomatoes were epic awesome!  It was all I could do to not just scoff them all in one sitting.

The pork crackling was ok, but not as thin and crispy as doing it on the meat

Monday.  Slept ok.  Did my quota of photo culling before work, which gives me hope I'll actually get this done.  Last day of being Neil hurrah!  I fixed a mail problem in the afternoon that had been there since December, so that was good.  Did nine minutes of weeding at lunch.  Better than nothing I guess.  Music after work and Stu made a nice salad of lettuce, cucumber, spring onion, some of the slow roasted tomatoes, minced fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and bacon bits I cooked on the weekend, to go with salmon I cooked.  

I was trying to do photo culling, but the sweetie was trying to print stuff for uni, but the printer was being a big fat poo.  It was flashing all its lights and once so we had to battle trying to get around than, but then it was continually getting jammed, so it was super annoying because I couldn't concentrate on photos because I had to stop every two seconds to unjam the printer.  So I got cranky and Stu got cranky.  We just want a quiet life and AND WHY THE F@#% WON'T THINGS JUST WORK!?!?!?  I gave up on photo culling after a while.  Then I was wondering why I don't seem to have any photos of the Walkie Talkie building in London.  Turns out it wasn't even built until after the last time I was there.. (which was ten years ago!)  I think I've got photos of its lift core under construction.  For some reason I thought it was built in the 70s!  I really need to get back to London some time..

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep (nearly midnight) but then slept ok.  More photo culling in the morning, now only three days of final culls to go (Leavesden Studios, Brussells and Legoland Billund).  Ok day, not being Neil yayy.  Approvals came much too late to get much cleaning done.  Did an hours weeding after work but no music oh well.  Chicken caesar salad for dinner.  After dinner I finished photo culling!!!  I was worried I wasn't going to get it done, but I did.  Now just need to process the photos and get them on the blog.

Wednesday.  Slept fairly well.  Did some tweaking of dashboards for our workflow.  Salmon and salad for dinner again (probably should have bought two pack not a four pack).  Blogged the Balloon Fiesta. Into the third (final) season of Lie to Me.

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Ok day.  Started thinking about another firewall migration.  Finally finished the salmon heh.  Watched random stuff on YouTube including Robin Williams on Don Lane in 1979.  There was a quote from him along the lines of (this is a direct quote but it's a bit rambly) "to keep performing live .. it keeps me alive.. and just.. it just.. keeps contact with people is very important, cause if not you get just get dead you don't take chances anymore, and for me that's very important."  Kinda sad really.

Friday.  Slept ok.  I wonder how much of my insomnia is dietary.  I've been *trying* to eat better.  Not sure it's helping or not.  Probably salmon and veggies is going to sit better than pizza or kfc...  Ok day, cleaning in the afternoon (always takes a lot longer than you think).  David arrived and we had beef cheeks for dinner.  It doesn't photograph well but it's oh so delicious.

Watched Zero Hour! with David in the evening.  It was kinda law that he had to see it :)  We also saw a bunch of his holiday photos/videos (before I called it cause I was exhausted and needed sleep).

Saturday.  Slept ok, although lately every time I wake up I have numb hands which is super annoying.  Did a chemist/groceries run in the morning and did some jigsaw, as well as finishing watching David's holiday photos/videos.  Made a lemon cheesecake in the afternoon, and did a pork roast for dinner (felt like I was on my feet most of the day).  Watched 6 Underground in the evening.  Eh, Michael Bay, and very violent.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Canberra Airport Open Day.  Will save that for another post.  Came home utterly exhausted.  The sweetie ordered Chong Co for dinner and I had a super early night.

My phone has better eyesight that me.  Spot the mistake :)  This is our country's $50 note.  Silly really.

David helped with the village on Saturday.

Duck salad and pork belly - our favourites

Monday.  Today.  Slept ok but awake pretty early.  Got two loads of washing done before work.  More firewall migration planning in between all the things.  After work brought in all the washing and did some weeding and then did music while Stu cooked dinner - a pasta bolognase which was very nice.  Treehouse of Horror XXII in The Simpsons - we're into season 23 now.  Then phone/camera downloading and blogging.  I still haven't made the bed or put away the washing though.  Trying to cram an entire weekend into before and after work.  Doesn't work.  Too stressed.  Too much to do to have time for work.  Sigh.

Sunday.  20th.  Stu cooked dinner - pumpkin and sage ravioli with burnt butter and salad.  Delicious!  Then watched random flashmob videos to keep me awake until something resembling bed time.

Monday.  I actually had a shower Sunday night on account of getting all sweaty in the garden earlier.  So I was actually fairly relaxed in bed.  For the first hour.  Where I still didn't get to sleep.  At 22:30 the restless legs kicked in.  At 23:00 I had a meltdown.  How can you be so tired that you can't actually sleep.  Sigh.  Then woke up at 6, so was zombie tired.  All day.  Plus I had a sore ring finger.  I thought I might have slept on it funny but I think I actually strained it (I bent the nail back on that finger weeding on Sunday).  Struggled to concentrate all day.  Music after work, leftovers for dinner then had on more flashmob videos to keep my brain awake enough to do photo culling.

Tuesday.  Slept somewhat better, although it still took a while for me to get to sleep and then I woke up at 5am.  More being Neil (in Cairns now!) and documenting cleanup work that needs doing.  The backs of my legs still hurt from all the exertion on Sunday.  Leftovers for dinner then lots of photo culling.  Got frustrated at yet another barking dog in the neighbourhood.  Sigh.

Really need to put Bambi away

Wednesday.  Slept ok, but then a day of non stop messages and phone calls and meetings and stoopid so didn't really get anything useful done.  Leftovers for dinner, then completed a first pass cull of all my Eurasia 2012 photos.

Thursday.  Slept ok I think.  Nothing much in the morning then went DND for a bit to get some work done in the afternoon which was super helpful.  Got back into the swing of things with some doco.

This is the entire Disney behemoth stacked.  Each of the ten sections is cut into four and layered on packing paper from our move in 2007.  So it's forty layers thick.

Friday.  Woke up at 1:40 with the start of hurty.  Took some painkillers.  An hour layer it was worse so maxed out on painkillers but they never fully helped and didn't get back to sleep til after 5.  Sigh.  So yet another zombie day.  Did finish the cleanup doco though.  The Chrises might have talked me into a Herbert's lunch.

This cider was pretty good - nice and strong and not sweet

Prawn and chorizo skewers, and brown sugar chicken skewers

Watched a couple of episodes of Autopsy in the evening.  Well I did, the sweetie went and worked on his essay :)

Saturday.  Slept relatively well, so alternated between house, photo culling and jigsaw after doing food shopping first thing.  Late in the afternoon we headed out to the club (for the first time in four months!) for the Mexican night by M&M which was amazing as always.  Although I did have flashbacks to earlier life when we couldn't find anyone to sit with and all the "cool kids" were sitting together and I had that epic feeling of rejection that was so familiar to me for such a long time and I might have had a small meltdown.  But Rob came to the rescue so that was nice.  

We finished off the last ever TRBC Tex Mex beer.  I really hope they make some more, it was epic awesome!

Sunset was pretty too

So many yummy things to try!

Had a relatively early night, but still woke up at ~2am til well after 5 (there were still people partying in the shed when I went up to pee).  Slept in a bit but today was pretty much zombie day.  Sigh.  

So today was struggling to get through house stuff and photo stuff (did get a few days fully culled though).  In the afternoon setup to cook a whole bunch of the food I got yesterday.  This should keep us going all week and then some.  There's some tomatoes, plus some mince with garlic, eschallot and bacon, some bacon for having with salads, chicken thighs, some pork crackling (experimenting) and veggies.

You'll have to wait til next week to see the results of this - a whole heap of cherry tomatoes cut in half, drizzled with oil, salt, pepper and herbs and slow roasted for a couple of hours.  So good!!  

I also somehow managed to end up with a completely clean kitchen, and photos downloaded and processed and a blog entry, all before 18:00!  Although no music practise, oh well.

Sunday.  27th.  Jigsaw sorting in the afternoon.  

Stu cooked dinner!  Pantry dinner basically, but it was very nice.

Monday.  Slept really well, hurrah!!  Scanned the second roll of Mum's negatives (found the missing sheet, it was just out of order).  It took All Morning.  Literally.  With each batch of eight taking three quarters of an hour or so, I could just set them going and then just spend a couple of minutes every hour swapping them out.  Back to work though.  Sigh.  Spent most of the day trying to get through emails (didn't finish), in between talking to all the people wanting all the things.  Had a look at the dashboard for the new system we put in just before I went on leave, only to find people haven't been doing things properly and making a mess of things.  Doh.  Got some music practise in, but no weeding before dinner.  Of pizza.  Because we still hadn't been shopping and there wasn't much food in the house (well nothing fresh anyway).  And the sweetie had had an insomnia-zombie day (we take it in turns).  Then I went food shopping.  By myself.  I don't think we've actually done a full Coles shop together in two years.  So the fridge is nice and full again!  Hurrah!  But then it was 20:30 and too late to feel like starting any photo stuff, so just watched an episode of Mentour Pilot.

Tuesday.  Didn't get to sleep til midnight, then awake from 2 (Stu still hadn't slept).  Had some cheese and went to loo, but itchy and uncomfortable and restless and my hands go numb if I leave them still for more than a few minutes and didn't get back to sleep til about 4:30.  Then woke up at 6:30.  Of course.  Zombie day.  Stu was double zombie so went back to bed and slept most of the day.  I went to work.  Scanned roll 3 of Mum's negatives.  Fairly quiet day, haven't looked at my todo list yet.  Weeding after work.  Salmon and salad for dinner - it's so nice having fresh food in the house.  Photo culling in the evening.

These passionfruit across the road look lovely when they flower, but their fruit are infertile.

Wednesday.  Slept well, hurrah!  The plumbers arrived first thing to attack all our pipes.  First up they had a go at the drain in the courtyard under the bedroom windows.  The hole was full of dirt and there was a 50mm pipe outlet pipe they didn't want to put the eel through, so they stuck a high pressure hose down it. And then tried to figure out where it went.  Turns out it goes off to the side of the property and then just drains into the side passageway. ?!?!  Probably it was put in as an afterthought.  Shouldn't be too much effort to keep that one clear.  Next they attacked the drain in front of the garage which blocks up during heavy rain.  They went in about thirty metres before finally finding a blockage.  !!!  So now all the stormwater drains properly which is pretty awesome.  Next was the sewer pipes, actually the easy one, the one I need doing every couple of years.  And finally they had a look at the NE downpipe.  We think it's supposed to flow into the drain in front of the garage.  But when they stuck a hose down the drainpipe, water started pouring out of the bricks behind the bins, and only a very little bit into the drain.  hmmm.  So they're coming back tomorrow with a camera to have a look at that one.  Ok day, cleaning and documenting the proxies.  Music practise, pork larb for dinner, photo culling.

It was cold and dark and miserable enough to light a candle

Thursday.  Ok day.  Plumber came back with camera.  He made a hole in the downpipe and had a look and couldn't get the camera down any further because the downpipe was actually separated from the other bit of the downpipe and there were roots everywhere and the whole thing is an epic disaster.  He spent ages poking around deciding what the best way forward would be.  Small Pot Belly session after work and KFC.

At Aquila's suggestion, Glenda brought these over!! :)

Friday.  Insomnia.  Spent some of that awake time stressing about the EMP apocalypse.  hmmm, what a useful way to spend my time.  Thought I'd do *one thing* at work, but never finished it because of interruptions and breaking things (well trying to fix something I broke in January - I did learn a whole heap about one of our products in the process though).  We tried watching Zero Hour! on archive.org, but it had issues buffering and synching audio/video so that was disappointing (I really wanted to see it).  The sweetie put on Dr Stangelove instead.  

Saturday.  Slept ok.  There was a pretty red sky in the morning that I didn't document.  Instead of doing anything useful, or anything I should be doing, I spent most of the morning tidying files on my computer.  hrmm.  And most of the afternoon on the jigsaw, so barely any photo culling.  Didn't help that the quote to fix the downpipe/drain was nearly $10000, plus another extra up to $2500 if they have to redo the concrete next to the bins if they can't blast through the half filled with concrete pipe that's there.  Sigh.  

I was feeling uninspired at dinner time, so the sweetie decided to make a very nice teriyaki sauce which we had with chicken/rice/cabbage. 

I was on a bleh mood so couldn't decide what to watch, so the sweetie put on No Time to Die.  Like longest Bond movie in history.  Went til way past my bed time.  Not that it mattered, I was still awake past 1am, when mice decided to start scritching around above our heads.  I couldn't sleep through that (omfg the anxiety), so moved into the spare room.  Where I still couldn't get to sleep til about 3am.  Sigh.  Woke up at 7am.  Of course.  Hurrah zombie day today.  

Had a look in the roof this morning.  The mice are way over there in the corner somewhere....

I was going to check on the situation and put down a mouse trap, but I only got that far before it all got too hard and I wasn't sure which beams were safe to walk on and it was dirty and spidery and I had to hold the torch in one hand and try and move around and I hadn't had enough sleep anyway and it was all too much and I freaked out and had a meltdown on that spot.  So no idea what we're going to do.  Probably we'll just get some Ratsak granules and literally just throw them at the corner and hope for the best.  I can't think of any other way to get across there.  Either that or just pay a professional to do it.  I'm totally not qualifed for home ownership :(:(:( 

So the rest of the day was basically a zombie waste.  I did make pretty good progress on the jigsaw though so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of a day??

The sweetie somehow managed to make this epic bubble while washing up

I fillled in a bunch more on Thumper after taking this photo

I think I'll be going to bed straight after dinner...

Monday.  31st.  Backdating.  Slept well.  I set off the stoopid hallway smoke detector while I was doing the dusting (I wasn't even anywhere fricken near it!!!) which gave me a heart attack because I was right under it, and then Stu couldn't get it to turn off.  He wanted to take it down, but the thing is a ten year battery life detector which has this incredibly stoopid feature that if you disable the battery you disable it PERMANENTLY.  So I'm not actually sure if the thing is even functional anymore.  Need to light a candle under it or something stoopid.  I swear I'd never buy another one of those things, I'd rather just replace the battery every couple of years.  Probably cheaper to do that anyway.  Super busy day at work, didn't get to do one of the things I wanted to.  Tax stuff in evening (figuring out my hours worked from home).

OMFG it's a disaster!  Something ate my little sunflower!! :(

Tuesday.  Woke up to fog.  It's been so humid the past few days it's been so disgusting.  Another super busy day at work.  *Still* didn't get to do the one thing I wanted to.

Wednesday.  Went to bed nice and early, but went to sleep late - like past 23:00 late.  #grunt.  Another super busy crazy day.

Thursday.  Yet another crazy day.  Sigh.  Pizza for dinner, then watched the second episdoe of the Girl on the Train vs Rear Window.

I took this on Thursday night, which was like the first photo on my phone in three days.  The larger horse on the left, Beau (or Bow, can't remember now) v2 replaced the one I dropped when I was in kindergarten or first class.  The smaller one I got not long after.  So they're like forty years old.

Friday.  Couldn't get to sleep for hours, sigh.  Woke up to 14C in the house which felt a tad cold for some reason.  Took the car to Woden for a service and got a lift back (thanks Tony!!).  Yet another crazy busy day.  As soon as I logged on there was an OMFG IT'S AN EPIC EMERGENCY thing that needed doing which they'd found out about out of hours the night before, and if someone had thought to call myself or Neil it wouldn't have been such an OMFG EPIC EMERGENCY.  Le sigh.  Picked up the car, then continued working trying to get stuff done.  Chicken kiev for dinner, and the girl on the train in the rear window, as well as packing ...   !!

Sunday.  9th.  Not backdating ;)  During the week I bought these mini capsicums, so thought I'd do a stuffing for them - a bit of mince, some brown rice, and feta.  Topped with a bit of shredded cheese and roasted for like 40 minutes.  Yummy!

Monday.  Woke up at ~3:45 hungry and needing to pee.  At this point the sweetie hadn't actually been to sleep yet!  Poor thing.  I didn't get any more sleep after that either.  It seems on a given night one of us will be awake.  hmmm.  Spent all morning doing finance and tax stuff, and most of the afternoon checking receipts against bank statements.  Had to laugh - the RTA *finally* closed off my etag account, but funnily enough they refunded me the deposit for the tag, even though I never returned it (it was crushed with my old car).  Maybe they figured it was so old it wasn't worth it.  Shrug.  And guess how many times I went to the ATM last year?  Once.  ONCE!!  And that was only to get cash out for the kids' Christmas presents.  At least ACT covid cases were down a bit (well maybe - chances are a lot aren't being reported now because RATs are taking some of the load).  Leftover pork (refried in jelly) and cabbage for dinner.  Then I watched Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Stumpy is a bit retarded sometimes!

Tuesday.  Awake for a while around dentist time - probably from the neighbourhood dog barking at a possum.  Depressed about losing all our money on the cruise, depressed about going back to work.  So my tolerance for the stoopid was at rock bottom.  After work went and got my booster jab.  They had plenty of people working the family queue which seemed to move quickly, but there was only one person processing the adult queue.  So I was waiting for over half an hour in a queue.  I think they moved a few nurses across from the family section once that queue quietted down, because they had a few people going by the time I got seen.  

Picked up Crust pizza on the way home, but they don't keep their pizzas in the oven like Dominos do, so one was a bit cold by the time I got there and got it home.  Bit sad to find out that Bob Saget died.  In the evening tried to file photos, but I just can't *see*, especially at night.  Super frustrating.  And my resized to 1280 wide photos only take up a quarter of the screen now.

Wednesday.  Dog was barking in the middle of the night again, but not for too long.  Otherwise I think I slept ok.  Felt in a much better mental state about work.  Decided to document Neil.  After lunch I started feeling trippy - the feeling you get when you're having an immune reaction.  Went and had a little lie down.  Didn't sleep of course, but did rest.  Felt weak and floppy all afternoon/evening.  But at least my immune system is *doing* something about covid, which is a relief.  Leftover lamb and salad for dinner.  As usual we put on The Simpsons over dinner, and as soon as it started I was like OMFG wide screen!  This episode (Take My Life, Please) first aired in February 2009.  And it was glorious!  Clean and crisp, so much nicer than the old animations.  Didn't feel like doing anything much, so put on the Disney 2003 version of The Young Black Stallion, which was ok for a kids movie, but short and sweet.

Thursday.  Felt much better after a decent sleep.  Ok day, more being Neil and documenting him.  Leftover stuffing mix and cabbage for dinner.  Started geotagging Mum and Dad's 1971 Tasmania trip photos.

Friday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep, but slept ok after than.  Ok day, more documenting and writing test plans.  Chicken kiev for dinner, and watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I'd seen it before and thought it was quirky but overly violent.  Stu thought it was weird.  Except I swear they sanitised the violence, because it wasn't nearly as violent as I remember it.  

This is the saddest thing.  These booties were on my baptism cake!  Mum had them in her china cabinet until she moved, then they'd been on top of my computer desk gathering dust.  They had already started to absorb moisture and collapse, but when I cleared off the top of my computer desk I moved them temporarily to the dining table.  Where they sat under the cooler vent.  And promptly melted into a puddle.  Sad times!!

Super annoyingly, the rear element of our oven seems to have died - it just didn't heat up the oven when I turned it on.  The thing is less that two years old which is a big stinking poo!!!

Saturday.  Spent much of the day geotagging Mum and Dad's Tasmania photos (and I got as many of them geotagged as I could of their trip).  In the afternoon I went down to Tony's to look at / pick up some maps and brochures for Tasmania.  Ended up staying for dinner which was nice.

Sunday.  House stuff and music in the morning, and looking at Tassie locations in the afternoon.  At lunch time we were sick of our usual lunches so went out for a drive to get some takeway.  Drove past the shop where a gas leak blew up the building. 

Then picked up some Oporto drive through and went to Diddams Close park to eat it by the lake.  That quite nice, although we did have a very captive audience watch us the entire time!!

Of course now I have to go and geotag all Mum's slides from her YHA trip to Tasmania in 1968 :)

My blog turns 19 today :)  I wish I wish I wish blogging was a thing in my earlier life, there's just so much missing that I never documented.  Not that I do a much better job of day to day life now, but at least there's something, and events are documented.  

David Bowie would have turned 75 today.

The Como-Jannali bushfires were 28 years ago today.

1981

I was eight. In bed asleep.

1991

Chrissie's and my family went to the Reid's

Graham, Dad, Susannah, Di, Mum

Chrissie on the couch

I think this was Andy, and Chrissie

2001

Literally no idea, there's no photos.  Might have done something with James/George/Luc/Lizzi, but actually no idea at all.

2011

Stu's friend Kore was in the country, so we had a touristy few days with her, including staying at a ridiculously overpriced hotel in the city.  We saw the 9pm fireworks from the hotel, and went over to North Sydney to watch the midnight fireworks from Lavendar Bay.  We got there very very late, so couldn't really see the bridge.  After the fireworks we went to Central to meet up with David and Yvonne who had come up from Canberra on the train (David was helping run it), before it went back to Canberra.

2021

We were originally going to go out to the club, but Omicron had us worried about being with a group of people, so we had a lovely quiet night at home with just the two of us.

Bubbles and dinner delivered from Chong Co

Glow stick fail!  I bought these in May for Kit's birthday.. turns out these things have a shelf life!

Guess what movie we watched to keep us awake til midnight? :)

Sydney fireworks are the best fireworks in the world I reckon ;)

Happy New Year!

See 2020. Rinse and repeat. Another crazy crazy year. Wondering if life will *ever* get back to any sort of normal.

Our year started out at the club with friends. It likely would have finished there too. Except Omicron. So it is going to just be the two of us for a lovely quiet night.

Life for the first seven and a half months in Canberra was actually relatively normal. Then in mid August (two days before my birthday) someone tested postive (thanks Delta) and we got put into a snap seven day lockdown. That lasted a couple of months. For us it meant the bliss of not having to go into the office. Things did start to open up again in October/November/December but case numbers here and in NSW and Victoria are higher than ever right now due to Omicron (the numbers are staggering - 21000 per day in NSW at the past couple of days - twenty times higher than at the peak of Delta.  462 today in Canberra - it's basically been doubling every couple of days, and now also ten times higher than Delta). We got put into lockdown in August for one case, yet now we have hundreds of cases per day but there's basically no restrictions other than having to wear a mask indoors. Craziness. I mean sure, 98.5% of 12+ year olds are fully vaccinated here, but most of us haven't had boosters yet. Stu and I plan to hide from people as much as possible over the coming weeks.

We couldn't go overseas in 2021, so our only travel was within NSW. We went to the coast to Kit and Pete's for Pete's birthday in March. We got to see their new house, went for a drive to the coast, had a ride on Elle, went out for Pete's birthday, went to Myrtle Beach, and saw Old Blotchy on the way home. We also visted them in May for Kit's birthday, going to Mollymook for lunch and having snacks and drinks by the fire in the evening. In April we had a five day long weekend over our anniversary and went to Bathurst, Lithgow, Newnes, Glen Davis, Gulgong and Dubbo. We tempted fate by having Mum come down at Christmas, and went to Junee on Boxing Day to visit David. The tour company we'd booked Oberammergau through was being difficult, so in the end we cut out losses and cancelled our trip with them. I booked tickets for the show itself later next year, and if things work out we'll plan a trip around it closer to the date. We're still desperately trying to get out of a cruise out of Florida early next year, but again, the tour company is being buttheadful and are refusing any sort of refund. Our only hope is that the whole thing is cancelled and we can get our money back. Come on Omicron, you can do this!

At work I did an awful lot of *cleaning*. Tidying things up, documenting, deleting old crap. Helped shut down an old environment and migrated to new firewalls. A floor shuffle in April meant an annoyingly loud team moved in next to us which was all sorts of stressful. But then another floor shuffle in July moved us away. Rereading blog entries for most of the year it was amazing how stressed out I was just having to go into the office. Things were so much nicer from August once in lockdown. In October we had a farewell lunch for someone at the Lighty - which was the first time I'd seen any of my colleagues in person in two and a half months. Went back into the office to work for a day a week in November. I did a whole heap of overtime from October to December doing upgrades and migrations. There was a whiksy night in June, and we had "virtual" drinks a couple of times during lockdown. We tempted fate and had our usual Christmas bbq by the lake (in the rain!).

Healthwise, the main problem for me is still bouts of insomnia every so often. I thought I might have been getting sick in April but fought it off. I got my vaccines in June, with basically no side-effects at all, other than a sore arm, and perhaps a sore neck a couple of weeks later (both times). We both got colds in July, probably from someone at the club the previous weekend. Stu got tested (negative), I didn't bother, I just isolated.

Our biggest change in home life this year was David getting a job driving freight trains out of Cootamundra, so he moved out in January. Mum came down at Easter and Christmas to visit both us, and David in Junee. We saw David for about half an hour in February, and he came and stayed the night before the air show. I finally got to meet Kellie, who I found out about in about August. A lovely, thoughtful person who has a lot of the same thought processes/opionions/life outlook as me - freaky! We saw Stu's family a few times during the year including a couple of visits by Immy to see Stumpy, an afternoon tea at Annie's in October (first human contact we'd had with any of our friends/family in two months), a visit in November, and Christmas afternoon with them. We saw a bit of the N-Gang, although not so much as previous years. There was Rob's 51st in May, dinner at EffanC's in June, a couple of virtual drinks with EffanC during lockdown, and dinner with all those guys at Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October. I was feeling like noone liked me in July, but these guys reminded me I do have some pretty great friends. Who needs stinking young people anyway. We had brunch with Kit in June when she was up, and had Kit stay overnight in November - first time she'd been here in probably nearly two years, and the two visits to their place as well. Jenn came over a couple of times in February and July (the latter for an Indian feast that Stu cooked). CRD came over for dinner in February, and we had her at the club a couple of times too.

At our social club we went out for most of the social functions in the first half of the year (except April because we were in Dubbo). There was Robert's Chinese New Year feast in February, Matt & Michelle's Mexican feast in March, Italian night in May, Ian and Chris's anniversary dinner in June, and we did Christmas in July. CRD came out with us in May, and I did some more priming of the cabinetry. I haven't done any more tho because we've just had so little free time. There was a bbq in late October which was the first time we'd been since lockdown, and we went a week later as well for the working bee. Then for Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in late November.

I got a massive amount done on my photos this year. Early in the year I thought I was done doing fixup scans of Dad's slides, but as I started processing them I realised how bad a lot of them still were. So I spent the rest of the year (well, from March to October) redoing them *again*. Even then, a lot of the early ones still have lots of fluff on them, but I'm kinda over it now, and they can stay as they are now. I did come up with CLI commands (in Excel) to add a whole heap of exif data into his slides. If he went to the trouble of recording the aperture, shutter and F stop, then why not add it into the data files! I also have commands to add the date (if known) and captions for them. I've started (well restarted for some of them) processing them with aforementioned scripts and cropping/colour correcting, but it's still a lot of work to try and sort out the mess he's made combining things that probably shouldn't have been combined, not to mention geotagging them as I go ;) I'm basically happy with 18 boxes so far, which is about 10% of the way through them all. If I'm lucky I'll be finally finished mid next year. Just in time to start scanning Mum's negatives which started in 1983 :) I won't be scanning all of Mum's negatives that's for sure - just the ones I care about, such as holidays and family photos. A lot of the early prints are pretty crap and discoloured. In the first week of January I started labelling my Eurasia 2012 photos. At five hundred per week it was going to take most of the year. But I did it! Twenty four and a half thousand photos in eleven months. In fact I actually finished one day early :) I had a play with some gallery generating apps, and even got my USA 2000 photos online with it. The main blocker for getting more online (other than time) is deciding where to host it (likey it'll just stay on my current host), but also how to integrate it with the blog. Seems silly to have two different sites that are very similar yet one has just highlights and the other has almost everything. Because it also means the gallery doesn't have the blog detail. It's a bit of a dilema. I finished filing all my club photos into directories by event/category. One of these days they might go into some sort of club archive, but need to get permission from people first. I spent months on and off tagging people in work photos with Picasa. Still not sure how to get that data into a useful format, but at least the data is there. Still need to get Wello and Ray over to help me tag people I don't know. I also realised only last week that I hadn't been backing up the Picasa DB directories, so if my C: drive had died I would have lost all that work - yikes!

Fish. So many baby fish! I got five platies in January - first time I'd ever had platies. They had some babies, of which two survived to adulthood, but all five original ones died, so I currently just have the two babies left. Stu's tank is still overgrown with algae, but I have a solution to that - guppies!! The two foot I have upstairs (and now the one downstairs as well) is basically algae free, which I put down to having so many guppies in those tanks. So as babies (so many babies!) get big enough, I'm transferring them to other tanks, including the big one, to work on the algae.
Inventory:
Angel tank (the 620T): 1 ancient cory, 2 platies that were born in that tank (the twins!), 1 zebra danio, 2 guppies
Two foot: guppies! - a bunch of adults that we mostly got a year ago, and a tonne of babies. Some of the juveniles have been moved to other tanks
Four foot: 14 congo tetras, about half a dozen guppies I moved in fairly recently, some suckers (we think), a loach (sadly his siamensis friend died recently)
Chrissie tank: 2 clown loaches and a sucker (really need to move that medium sized sucker into the angel tank and bring one of the little ones up from downstairs, because Chrissie's big sucker in the angel tank died)
Downstairs two foot: four adult males, two adult females, and a tonne of babies, and two small suckers
Nursery tank: a few babies and juveniles, including a couple of very pretty spotted ones I'm hoping will be female
Other one foot tanks: more guppies
Stumpy is still doing well. I do think he got hungry earlier this year though. And now at the height of summer he's barely coming out at all. Silly lizard :)

No Lego building this year. We (David) moved the four-baseplate mosaic into the hallway so Stu could have the wall back for his things. I had a play with Gimp for making Lego mosaics (you feed it the colours you have in stock into a pallette file, then apply that pallette to your photo - voila! Mosaic pattern!), but haven't actually made one yet. I wanted to make one this break. Maybe I still will. If I can think of a picture that would work. I had some fun playing with Lego Digital Designer to continue working on the Lego model of our house. I got pretty much all the main floor done, but got stuck when it came to doing the roof design. The slope of the roof matches approximately a 1:4 slope brick, which you can get, but you can't get corner pieces, so doing corners would be messy. Might have to look into making the roof slops with plates/tiles. I still really haven't done any more work sorting out Vic's Lego. It just got too time consuming and depressing (because so much of it was missing). I did spend a bit of time sorting/constructing minifigs (so we can get the dungeon room back) but that was short-lived too. I might spend another couple of weekends trying to finalise another few sets, then just give up and start buying Lego to replace what's missing. Because after that is the really fun part - actually building sets.

This year was a year for *big* jigsaws. I did three sections of the Disney Behemoth - Dumbo, Snow White and Fantasia. Only one section to go now. I could have gotten it done by Christmas but it's very distracting and I had a tonne of other things that needed doing. Did a bunch of jigsaws at work too, although a lot slower on account of not being there as much (or at all). David and I made a 3D jigsaw model of the Titanic at Easter. I'm totally drooling over the Lego Titanic. I reckon I could do it, wait for it to not be on sale anymore, then sell it, and probably make a profit. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for sales ;) Very slow progress on the paint by numbers I got last Christmas. The main blocker there is the difficulty just *seeing* it - even with reading glasses I still need a magifying glass to see the tiny numbers. I took the plunge and bought myself a clarinet in September. I've been practising most days, but I still really struggle with bridging the register and the upper register notes. And reading music. I'm ok with the notes but not the tempo, so really struggle with playing music I don't know the tune to already.

Tech. Our NAS power supply died in March (someone let the smoke out). Stu bought a new one and replaced it himself. At some point we should probably get something more modern (with a higher version of SMB). The E: drive died in my computer, and since it was nine years old decided to get a new one. Haven't used it much but it seems pretty snappy. Continued frustration with Apple. Apple decided after one update this year to arrange all photos on the phone by month. This was great! But in the next update they reverted to a thousand photos per folder. And it's *still* messing with the datestamps on my photos. Hate Apple. Hate. Other purchases. Had to get new jeans. Eventually found some that are mediocre. Hating the fact that they don't make girls jeans with decent pockets. We also got a frame made (online) for my last paint by numbers, but the mounting bracket was mounted off-centre. Sigh.

Around the house. Had a lot of frustration at the beginning of the year with bathroom sealer companies not getting back to me. Eventually got a shower sealing company to come have a look. They confirmed loose tiles/cracked grout, but wouldn't replace them because there's asbestos in the walls. We bought a new mattress and then a new frame. King size which is great, but ultimately disappointed with it all. We watched a bunch of videos from Solar Quotes, but a year later we still haven't done anything about solar. Before winter I was doing a little bit of weeding, and got back into it when it warmed up. I make piles and piles, but everything grows back faster than I can get rid of it. I'm really really looking forward to getting green and organic waste pickups every week. It'll be easier to stay on top of garden waste, and our regular bin might go out like once every six months instead of every month or so like it does now.

Didn't eat out much this year. We did go to Ramen O a few times, and Koku Super Kare a couple of times, but would be good for both of those to have a cheaper, smaller lunchtime option. I went to Herbert's a few times, mostly with Tony and/or the Chrises and Neil. The sweetie and I tried KorBQ in the mall for our last work lunch together. We went to Pizza Artigiana once, and Dumpling Inn seems to be closed permanently which is sad. Had brunch with Annie at The District in April. We had Chong Co in May, and delivery from them a couple of times. Had brunch with Kit at Stellas by the Lake in June (it's no longer Black Pepper). Went with EffanC and R&F to Hachiko in July and Indian Pantry in October (which was our first outing post lockdown). Had Charnie's Noodle and Dumplings delivery in November, which was somewhat underwhelming, and Sichuan Chinese takeaway a couple of times in December, which is expensive but nice. Subway did a "cheesy garlic bread" (garlic butter, plus extra cheese) for a while which was awesome.

Cooking-wise, tried a few new things and some old favourites. There was zucchini spaghetti early in the year from some epic zucchinis we got from Con. I tried oven baked feta pasta (Uunifetapasta) from Tik Tok which wasn't too bad (but all that feta is way too salty for my blood pressure). I had a go at replicating Dominos puff pastry pepperoni and feta pizza. It was almost identical to the Dominos version - so amazing. But did someone say something about salt and blood pressure? We had Cath's crumbed basa a couple of times. I tried Ray's method of reheating pizza - frying it in a little oil with the lid on. OMFG this was so good - even better than it eating it fresh. Had that 80s deep pan vibe about it. Sooo good. I had a go at san choy bow in September which worked pretty well (Chris only has iceberg lettuce, so thought I'd have a go at doing something with that since I hadn't been to Coles in forever). I made meat jelly rice a few times - to use up meat jelly that you can't think of a better use for, mix with water and rice to make quite a flavourful rice. I experimented with slow cooker lamb roast (which I tried at the club for Christmas in July but only managed a mouthful of it because the rest of it got snapped up by everyone - I *think* it was really good?? :) ), and also slow cooker turkey (the first time it was fairly dry; it was better the second go but really works better with fattier meat). I made three new things from my Women's Weekly Gratins and Bakes book - Seafood Mornay Lasagna (expensive and fiddly and, well, seafoody), Spaghetti Rosa Bake (nice, but spaghetti is messy), Penne Arribbiata Bake (good, even with anchovies, and easy enough that I've done it a few times). We got a few nice strawberries off our strawberry plants, and there's chillis coming. I made a couple of different lemon cheesecakes in February and March, and combined them to come up with a definitive, easy to make recipe (that I tried before Christmas) that I'll probably use moving forward. I made a rocky road in February. I made Not Quite Nigella's mint slice in August, which was pretty good so made it again for Christmas.

And now for the lists!

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions
* Hamilton (on Disney+ so you may not want to count it ;) )

Movies (at the Movies)
* Penguin Bloom

Movies (TV - not all movies, but I've included series)
* Studio Ghibli movies
* Honey I Shrunk the Kids series
* A whole heap of true stories and spy movies, which is what Stu tends to pick when it's his turn
* The Poseidon Adventure (saw the remake at some point earlier, the original is way better)
* Some old Australian movies - Playing Beatie Bow, Gallipoli, The Shiralee
* Fantasia 2000 a few times, and Fantasia
* Nanny McPhee 1 and 2
* The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 1 and 2
* Snow White original and remake
* Dan Brown series
* Some Bette Midler movies
* Some Tom Hanks movies
* The Matrix trilogy
* Die Hard 1 and 2 and Love Actually in December

TV
* Discovery (finished season 3)
* The Simpsons (started off in season 5, ended up nearly finished season 19)
* The X-Files (seasons 1, 2 and a bit of 3)
* Laid Back Camp (seasons 1 and 2)
* Hibike! Euphonium (seasons 1 and 2)
* Encore!
* Amazing Race Australia
* Lego Masters
* A Place Further than the Universe
* The Surgeon's Cut
* Aircrash Confidential
* Alfred Hitchcock Presents (a bit of it)
* Human: The World Within
* Pandemic
* Diagnosis
* Brides of Christ
* The Movies that Made Us
* Air Crash Investigations (some recent seasons I hadn't seen)
* Love on the Spectrum
* Connected
* How the Mind Works
* Lie to Me (season 1 and most of season 2)
* You Can't Ask That (seasons 1 to 6)
* Sex Education (seasons 1 and 2)

Books
* Heartache and Birdsong by Sam Bloom, Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive
* To Catch a King by Harry Patterson
* Seizure by Kathy Reichs
* Doctor No by Ian Fleming

Other stuff
* neighbourhood dog barked nonstop for hours on end for months. It make me super cranky all last summer break and well into the new year
* scanned a whole heap of stuff in the filing cabing
* Disney+ launched "Star" with a whole heap of new content it could take me a lifetime to watch
* saw the RAAF 100th Anniversary airshow which was pretty amazing
* went down to Lake Burley Griffin for a wander round with the sweetie on Easter Monday
* saw my magpies throughout the year
* voted for and listened to ABC Classic FM's top 100 "Music You Can't Live Without"
* had to start wearing masks indoors for two weeks in June - my first time was in July for seeing my dentist. I continued wearing a mask in the mall even though I didn't have to, because you can't trust people to stay home when they're sick.
* snap 7 day lockdown in August that lasted three months
* had a lovely quiet birthday at home with nice food and hobbies and had Chong Co delivered
* we were in an exposure site the Wednesday before the lockdown, but didn't find out until Wednesday a week later. Had to get tested but it meant only a week of full lockdown at home. It was a good thing I'd done a big food shop that morning. The Saturday after that we got an sms from Canberra health that we'd been in an exposure site - literally a week and a half after we'd been there. Fricken hopeless.
* I missed the earthquake! (in September)
* in September I found out the super annoying yappy staffies down the road killed each other. No more annoying barking!!!!
* the first of October was an epic news day. 52 covid cases recorded - highest ever in Canberra for one day. ScoMo announced opening of international borders a lot sooner than we first thought. Gladys resigned.
* saw the remains of Floriade in Belconnen, but missed out on seeing it sans-crowds in Commonwealth Park
* would often go three weeks between Coles shops during the lockdown, getting essentials at Chris's
* went to the online funeral for Win Cartan. Still annoyed I didn't get to see them when I was at church in early 2019. Oh well, will see them in heaven soon enough.
* planted sunflowers across the road. One sprouted and is still going (last I looked)
* petrol prices hit an all time high in November
* mask mandate reintroduced just before Christmas (I reckon it should have been weeks earlier)

So there we have it. Another epic year. And for once I have this review done *before* the end of the year! It took *hours* :) Have a happy and safe new year. Get your booster. Eat less. Drink less. Sing. Floss. Stretch. Dance. Wear sunscreen.

Sunday.  12th.  Backdating because life got in the way, and then some.  BBQ leftovers for dinner.  Into season 2 of Sex Education.  Got my RSS feed down to 1.  1!!  (the pic I posted the other day).  I'd gotten heaps of stuff done around the house, but I was feeling super anxious about all the computer stuff I didn't get done over the weekend.

Look at all the lemon marmalade Stu made!

Monday.  Woke up at like 5:20 #grunt.  Ok day I guess.  I renewed Stu's domain name, booked a covid booster and bought a new computer.  Although nothing on the regular todo list - this was just catching up from stuff I should have done on the weekend.

Tuesday.  Dunno, I don't have any notes.  But here's a photo of Stumpy doing pushups.

Wednesday.  Spent all morning explaining to people how email works.  Le sigh.  Spent all afternoon doing all the doco for all the rules I deleted recently (and not many interruptions which was nice).  Then weeding, music, leftovers, work photo labelling and year in review reading.

Thursday.  At work, blerf.  We had a morning tea which sufficed for lunch, so I worked through lunch on the jigsaw in a push to get it finished just in case it was the last time I was in for the year.  And I did finish it!  Had a nice last drinks of the year, then pizza and tv.  Dominos was hit by a ram raid, which I thought was totally bizarre, I mean who even pays in cash anymore.  Still, it's one of the busiest Dominos stores in Australia, so if there was the one to get with even a small percentage of cash payments that'd be it.

Friday.  Helped with some prep for some Saturday work.  Die Hard 2 in the evening.  

Saturday.  A day of All The Things, and even some overtime.  Had quite a productive day, including making a lemon cheesecake, although my todo list is still years too long.  Matrix Revolutions in the evening.

Sunday.  Too stressed about everything to sleep.  And the storm certainly didn't help.  Woke up at 6:05 so decided to get up and go do some food shopping.  I was a bit slow getting everything put away, and then suddently it's mid morning.  hrmm.  I did get a litt bit of stuff done in the morning, and finished season 6 of You Can't Ask that at lunch.  Then in the afternoon I went down to Herbert's to join Tony and a bunch of his friends for an early birthday celebration for him.  The walk down was in the rain, but that didn't stop me from taking lots of photos of flowers.  There was some nice jazz music going at Herbert's, and a few of us went back to Tony's after for another drink (including a very green blackberry sour).

No notes for the evening, but I certainly didn't feel up to fighting with my phone and blogging.

Sunday.  14th.  Cooked All The Food for dinner.  Started into season 18 of The Simpsons.  Started watching the 2020 version of The Witches but didn't end up finishing it (finished it later in the week).

(dinner was basa fillet bake, although I probably cooked it a bit too long - it was pretty dry)

Monday.  Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, feeling hot, even tho it was *cold* (13C in the house when we woke up - cold enough to turn the heater on!).  Saw my birds at lunch - needed my jacket because it was *cold* !  And noticed one of the sunflower seeds had sprouted (didn't see any others though).

Also picked the first strawberry off the plants Michelle gave us last year.  I considered splitting with the sweetie but in the end ate it all myself ;)

Weeding after work, and 78 photos labelled before dinner.  I figure I have time for two out of three things between finishing work and dinner - weeding, music practise, photo labelling.  Had time after dinner/Simpsons for a bit of music practise, and managed 182 photos labelled all up.

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Was Neil for the morning.  Did a whole pile of doco for some rules which had never been documented before, so that I could do doco for my one simple little rule that needed adding.  Also did some thinking about the next round of cleaning that needs doing.  Lunch was leftover tacos.  Taco Tuesday!

After work was weeding and music, with mango chicken I cooked on Sunday for dinner (the chicken is somewhat buried under all that rice)

Managed to label 353 photos! Although Aaron called, which stopped me finishing day 53 in Asahiyama Zoo.  

Wednesday.  Spent all morning writing up details for cleaning out of a super complicated system no longer in use, but may come back one day, so want to be sure we have a good record of what we would need to do for it.  

Not much in the afternoon, spent too much time helping people with stuff.  Then worked late, had a quick break for dinner, then back online for work for more upgrades.  So behind in labelling for the week after all.

Thursday.  Couldn't do any fixup scanning in the morning because the computer wouldn't talk to the scanner.  I mean I know I really needed to reboot my computer but it takes so damned long to do it.  Started the process at 7:54am.  It was 8:28 by the time I'd saved/noted/closed everything, patched and rebooted, and 8:31 by the time I'd gotten Chrome loaded.  Le sigh.  The sunflower hasn't changed much in a couple of days..

Spent the day cleaning all the things.  Creamy fettucini for dinner.

Simpsons, whisky tasting, Speed Cubers

Then I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  I'm not usually a fan of Adam Sandler/Ben Stiller movies, and this one started off pretty silly, but the scenery in Iceland was stunning and it turned out to actually be quite sweet a movie.  Even managed to label 57 photos.  

Friday.  Another day of cleaning.  Watched Soylent Green in the evening.  It was made in 1973 but set in 2022 (we should have watched this next year!).  I reckon they could have at least *tried* to not make it look like the 70s in terms of fashion and decor :)

Today's pickings!

Saturday.  Did all the Saturday morning things.  Downloaded my email and found out they wanted to charge me another $1000 for the cruise I'm trying to get out of (for port fees or some such crap).  Had a little freak out and ended up calling them (don't know how much that's going to cost me).  At least I managed to get them to defer it til the end of December, but this whole covid thing has really put me off ever booking a holiday in advance if there's no option of refunds. We've already lost thousands on Europe, and likely to lose even more on the cruise. Makes me sick thinking about it actually.  

But then.

I've had this in my rss feed for a couple of weeks that I can't bring myself to mark as read.  It's a reminder to me that my problems are First World Problems.  So What if I lose $10000 dollars on some holidays I can't take.  At least I'm not displaced from my country due to or war or famine or whatever.  Life is good.  Really.

Then I spent the entire day alternating between the jigsaw and filing club photos (I've been sorting 9 years of club photos into folders for posterity).  Actually managed to finish photo filing!

This was the jigsaw progress mid afternoon.  A bit difficult to see what's going on, because I'm doing one half literally on top of the other half.  

Leftovers for dinner, and in the evening watched Official Secrets - a really interesting telling of the story of Katharine Gun and her efforts to prevent the 2003 war in Iraq.

Sunday.  Today.  Really just spent the whole day on the jigsaw (and finished season 4 of You Can't Ask That at lunch).

This is the progress in the morning.  Already I've done heaps since last night.

By late morning I'd done every piece that was on top of the other half.  So everything here is identical on either side.

Once that was done, I twinned up all the "special pieces"

At lunch I put on dinner - devilled lamb shanks (with de-boned meat I found at Coles)

And by mid afternoon I'd finished the jigsaw!!  Amazing that it took about seven weeks to do the first half of the jigsaw, then two days to do the second half!

Then did some music practise before Annie and the girls came over to chat for a bit.  Then it was photo downloading and blogging and dinner is just about ready!